You can listen to this reflection here.
The landowner in the story Jesus told about the unfruitful fig tree makes a very harsh assessment about this tree: It is wasting the soil. The response of his gardener is to deal not with the tree, but with the soil: "So he said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, 'Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'"
This gardener is a believer in second chances, in improving the conditions in which something (or someone…) can thrive. He does not blame the tree; he does not think it is squandering the very soil in which it sits. He thinks the soil needs some improvement, some aerating, so water and carbon can get to the roots of the tree. And he thinks it needs fertilizing, to add nutrients and catalyze growth.
I am not a biologist, but I am fascinated by the efficiency of eco-systems, whether within the human body or in the natural world. The way limbs and leaves fall and decay, generating nutrients which help bring about new growth in the next season is but one example of organic economy. Nothing is wasted – even waste products.
The same can be true of our lives. In what ways has the “manure” generated in your life functioned to fertilize new growth? Often we don’t want to look at our emotional waste – it’s ugly and smelly and dark, like the biological kind. We’d rather flush it away. But what if we invited God to help us use that matter for growth? What if we asked what use that failed relationship or thwarted professional venture or even trauma could possibly be for our future fruitfulness?
Here I’m venturing into icky territory, but I am fascinated by the uses which medicine is finding for human waste. The careful reintroduction of “cleaned” excrement back into someone’s system can restore the balance of gut biomes, resolve ailments like C.diff and celiac disease, and possibly even cure conditions such as MS. (Here is a compelling and easy to read New Yorker article from a few years back about medical uses of excrement.) I think there is a spiritual analogy here.
This is one purpose for repentance – not to wallow in our “manure,” but to bring into the light things of which we are not proud, to bring healing and redemption into our wounds or failures – and just maybe render them useful to us in the future. Left alone, they just accumulate and decay, building up noxious gases in our psyches. But when we aerate our soil, inviting in light and air, that which seems most useless can become the ground of new growth. We can do this in therapy, in the confessional, or both.
This is true of societal detritus as well as personal. Our attempts to flush away cultural sins such as racism and chronic poverty have not brought healing. We need to reckon with the effects, address the horrors, feel the feelings if we hope to move through the trauma to a new way of being. This is the approach Restorative Justice takes – it can break cycles of vengeance and lead to freedom and new relationships. Maybe learning how to repurpose our waste – compost our failures – can result in the fruit of justice and peace.
© Kate Heichler, 2025. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Showing posts with label healing from trauma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healing from trauma. Show all posts
9-6-23 - Freed To Set Free
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Do we want this much power? Several times Jesus sets our authority to offer or withhold forgiveness into a cosmic framework, saying that what we do in this world is mirrored in the heavenly realm. “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Yikes.
Maybe Jesus teaches this process of confrontation and reconciliation because there are such cosmic consequences to ignoring conflict and pain. When we bury our hurts, sweep our conflicts under the rug, not only do we stay bound, we keep the perpetrators of hurts bound to us. No one is free.
I believe that what God wants most for us is freedom. I have seen the process of healing and forgiving result in amazing freedom for people, huge releasing of energy and giftedness, new ability to see, to hope, to live. As I reflect on this, I keep thinking of stories of survivors of sexual abuse and trauma. (The next two paragraphs contain nothing explicit, but if this is a sensitive area for you, read with care.)
I once prayed for months with a woman who had endured sexual abuse throughout her life – people who have been victimized as children often suffer similar abuse in adulthood. This woman saw herself more as victim than survivor, and harmed herself as well. One time I said something about moving toward forgiveness. She turned on me in fury and said, “They told me in my support group that I don’t ever have to forgive!” I backed down, thinking, “That is true – but then will you ever be free?” Forgiveness cannot be rushed, but to close ourselves to it leaves us bound to people who have hurt us.
Years later I met another woman. She and her two sisters had been sexually abused throughout childhood by their father and grandfather, who were still alive and in the family. She had done the excruciating work of addressing those wounds and moving toward healing, and had come to forgive her abusers. She did not trust or get close to them, and worked to ensure the safety of children in the family system, but over time she released the awful burden of their crimes. And then she was no longer psychically connected to them – forgiveness meant freedom from them. Her sisters refused to do this work; one was deeply alcoholic and the other suicidal. As brutal as it is to work at healing from trauma, it is a movement toward freedom, toward life.
Few of us experience trauma this severe – but we might feel bound in some way by a hurt we have suffered or anger we continue to hold. Usually the anger is justified, but it can still be corrosive over time. Today, can we let some of those stuck places come up in our mind, and pray about forgiving people who have hurt us, or ask forgiveness of those whom we have hurt? If we ask the Spirit to show us those things, they often emerge from the muck.
Inner healing is a powerful process of bringing the love of God to bear on our emotional wounds. I have witnessed tremendous transformation result from the healing of memories and specific areas of woundedness. (If you want to know more about this process, please contact me.)
As we release that healing stream of God’s love and power to soak into hidden wounds and resentments, life returns to parched places, and old knots become unwound so that peace can flood in. “It is for freedom that Christ has made us free,” Paul wrote. Jesus has won for us freedom to release ourselves and others. Let’s set the captives free.
Do we want this much power? Several times Jesus sets our authority to offer or withhold forgiveness into a cosmic framework, saying that what we do in this world is mirrored in the heavenly realm. “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Yikes.
Maybe Jesus teaches this process of confrontation and reconciliation because there are such cosmic consequences to ignoring conflict and pain. When we bury our hurts, sweep our conflicts under the rug, not only do we stay bound, we keep the perpetrators of hurts bound to us. No one is free.
I believe that what God wants most for us is freedom. I have seen the process of healing and forgiving result in amazing freedom for people, huge releasing of energy and giftedness, new ability to see, to hope, to live. As I reflect on this, I keep thinking of stories of survivors of sexual abuse and trauma. (The next two paragraphs contain nothing explicit, but if this is a sensitive area for you, read with care.)
I once prayed for months with a woman who had endured sexual abuse throughout her life – people who have been victimized as children often suffer similar abuse in adulthood. This woman saw herself more as victim than survivor, and harmed herself as well. One time I said something about moving toward forgiveness. She turned on me in fury and said, “They told me in my support group that I don’t ever have to forgive!” I backed down, thinking, “That is true – but then will you ever be free?” Forgiveness cannot be rushed, but to close ourselves to it leaves us bound to people who have hurt us.
Years later I met another woman. She and her two sisters had been sexually abused throughout childhood by their father and grandfather, who were still alive and in the family. She had done the excruciating work of addressing those wounds and moving toward healing, and had come to forgive her abusers. She did not trust or get close to them, and worked to ensure the safety of children in the family system, but over time she released the awful burden of their crimes. And then she was no longer psychically connected to them – forgiveness meant freedom from them. Her sisters refused to do this work; one was deeply alcoholic and the other suicidal. As brutal as it is to work at healing from trauma, it is a movement toward freedom, toward life.
Few of us experience trauma this severe – but we might feel bound in some way by a hurt we have suffered or anger we continue to hold. Usually the anger is justified, but it can still be corrosive over time. Today, can we let some of those stuck places come up in our mind, and pray about forgiving people who have hurt us, or ask forgiveness of those whom we have hurt? If we ask the Spirit to show us those things, they often emerge from the muck.
Inner healing is a powerful process of bringing the love of God to bear on our emotional wounds. I have witnessed tremendous transformation result from the healing of memories and specific areas of woundedness. (If you want to know more about this process, please contact me.)
As we release that healing stream of God’s love and power to soak into hidden wounds and resentments, life returns to parched places, and old knots become unwound so that peace can flood in. “It is for freedom that Christ has made us free,” Paul wrote. Jesus has won for us freedom to release ourselves and others. Let’s set the captives free.
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